when an albers or a shahn could be had for a song...

a few weeks ago i found this little brochure for the "la tausca art exhibition" held at the santa barbara museum of art in 1948. inclusion into the show was juried by guy pene du bois, adolf dehn, robert gwathmey, karl knaths, yasuo kuniyoshi, and others. awards were also given, by a different jury, which included ben shahn, bradley walker tomlin, and others. there are several interesting things about the show beyond the participants.

first off, instead of charging artists to participate, the brochure states that "all participants (except those who win prizes or make sales) will receive a rental fee of $100 for the use of their work - just as if the fine artist rated the same economic importance as the carpenter at $3.05 per hour or the metropolitan opera tenor at $2,000.00 per night. from any angle, cultural or industrial, this enlightened attitude makes sense..."

all of the work in the exhibition was for sale, and the artists and prices are pretty interesting... here's a bit of the best knowns of the 65 exhibited.

joseph (sic) albers "dark" $800
william baziotes "blue flower" $750
stuart davis "lawn and sky" $800
philip evergood "new york city susanna" $1500
charles howard "the ancestral mitre" $675
karl knaths "fighting cockerel" $1000
yasuo kuniyoshi "this is my playground" $3500
reginald marsh, "lackawanna ferry" $750
george LK morris "mechanical forms" $650
irene rice pereira "yellow square" $900
ben shahn "the boy" $650
raphael soyer "yadida hindu dancer" $1500
bradley walker tomlin "still life" $350

the stuart davis won second prize of $2000, the kuniyoshi won fifth award of $250, and the nicholas vasilieff still life pictured above won first prize of $3000 (more than the cost of any painting in the show). i love the charles howard painting, which won third prize.

i snooped around a little to see if any of these paintings were online in color, and or in museum collections, and discovered the blanton owns the stuart davis painting. you can see a small color image of it here.

for those of you design minded folks, the cover and catalog were designed by milton ackoff.

myron stout on josef albers...

"... i suppose albers came to his purism out of de stijl and kandinsky, and with the strong touch of 19th century scientific idealism which brought such a strong pragmatic note to the bauhaus - together, of course, with the german mystical-metaphysical idealism.

the earlier purists were so much more the poets and the mystics in their work than any now practicing and these are the very qualities which gave their work more validity (together, of course, with greater artistry) than that of the ones now practicing. i include albers, of course, with the earlier ones, though i can not feel him the artist that mondrian was, of course. he certainly does have the transcendental ideal, though, and he not only does not lose it with increasing age, but seems to strengthen and clarify it. his work always gives me pause, because the scientifically "measured" quality always stops me (at least momentarily - and sometimes blocks me) on the way "through" his work to what he has to say or present. on the other hand i always come again and again to a great admiration for the consistent and truly integrally held vision which impels him and is, on the whole, revealed in his work. that he can hold it is very remarkable, for it's almost as though he were a man out of his time - he should have lived a generation earlier when the materialism and lack of faith and conviction of today would not have been there to beat on him and his audience. the solitariness of his powerful idealism would have been easier to bear, so to speak, had he come to full flower in 1900 or 1910 instead of now. i think possibly he has not been able to reconcile his ideals with the world he finds himself in - his work is not embracingly "telling" enough. but he still holds to the basic - to the fundamental of what he knows will give expression to what he means."

april 28, 1960

top: josef albers hommage to the square
bottom: myron stout, 1950

four poems by josef albers...

1.
the more
the sun shines
the more
water evaporates
clouds appear
and the sun
- shines less

the less
the sun shines
the less
water evaporates
clouds diminish
and the sun
-shines more

da capo

2.
calm down
what happens
happens mostly
without you

3.
one is walking
one is standing
who is more entitled
to the path

4.
easy - to know
that diamonds - are precious
good - to learn
that rubies - have depth
but more - to see
that pebbles - are miraculous